Problematic Verisimilitude 21

So Britney Spears is getting married to one of her back up singers, after they dated for about two months or some shit. This is hot on the tail of her last marriage, which lasted 55 hours. Apparently, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony (is it fucking spelled with an `H' or not, assholes?!) are probably married. This is hot on the tails of Jennifer Lopez calling off her engagement with Ben Affleck, which was hot on the tails of her marriage to one of her back-up singers, which was just after she broke up with some producer, which were a few years after her first marriage.

So we aren't letting homosexuals marry because it'll cheapen the sanctity of marriage? Fuck, I hope that means that celebrities aren't the examples for the rest of Western Culture.

Which they fucking are, unfortunately. We have that idiot Toby Keith informing most of the masses on just what is what as far as foreign policy goes (America Rules, and those bastards we're bombing, whoever they are this week, deserve it!) , we have Madonna (Sorry, sorry, Esther) determining the course of the public religion (just fringe enough to feel subversive), and the aforementioned sexually ambiguous people determining how we should act in relationships.

Before I even go further . . . I have to say it again. ESTHER. What the fuck is going on in the world? When did things not only stop making sense, they started making some horrible kind of nonsense that I haven't beheld since that one time the flue went to my brain?

Is this really the kind of image we want to portray to future generations? To other countries? To potential extraterrestrial civilizations considering to make contact with our lonely orb? That we're all idolizing goddamn Paris fucking Hilton?

Yes, I know, not all celebrities are outpatients from the clinic where they hit you on the head with a large blunt object. Some of them actually take an interest in politics and the world around them, and some of them do this intelligently. But that just isn't fucking enough to make up for the pure cerebral failure that is contemporary culture.

I remember when I was younger, I kept on seeing this odd television shows for `time capsules'. The idea was that you'd put a nice representative of the modern culture in this tube, bury it somewhere nobody would ever go (apparently, a local library), and in about fifty or so years, dig it back up to see just how things where back in those days.

I feel embarrassed, and more then just a little bit disgusted for what those future generations will be pulling out of the earth that so badly wanted to expel the poisonous little tubule. I feel as if we're all in some kind of grand line, having our common sense slowly removed with drano and a frying pan. Every time I look out into the world, I regret it so quickly and so completely, that I try to pretend that there is in fact no world outside of the immediate area (the local pizzeria notwithstanding).

Everything is shallow now. The politics most Americans listen to is provided by fox news and country music singers. This means that whoever we bomb was obviously about to do something bad to us, so don't fucking ask goddamn stupid questions like `Where are those Weapons of Mass Destruction," "where is Osama Bin Laden", and "How come I can't get a job anywhere despite my college degree?"

Religion has been notoriously shallow ever since some dipshits realized they could make some good cash by convincing us an invisible man can see us and that he made everything for us, and would very much be cross if we didn't listen to what he said. But it's even more shallow now, as everyone and their goddamn dog is either a born again Christian (like a regular Christian, but they tried twice), a Wiccan (like a regular Christian, but with incense), or studying the Kabbala (like a regular Christian, but trendy as all fucking get out).

Hell, even our drugs show just how bad our civilization has gotten. No, I'm not fucking anti-drugs, read my other column. But most of the mid-west is addicted to fucking methamphetamines. Do you know what that shit does? It keeps you awake and energized for hours. That's it. You don't experience anything mind expanding, you don't come up with good ideas, fuck, you don't even get an increased desire to eat. You just work more, work harder, work faster. That's what most of those fucks in the mid-west take it for, so they can work longer hours at goddamn Wal-Mart.

Which, I might add, is quickly becoming the only outlet for EVERYTHING nowadays. Wal-marts are springing up like Starbucks used to. Every fucking town I got to now is either building a Wal-Mart or has two of them already. Everything can be sold at those, from garden house to cyanide (which I hope many Wal-Mart customers use appropriately and self-destructively). Everything about that store strips the point to buying things out of everything . . . everything is cheap and affordable (yes, in that order), but is not exactly something you'd want. Just how much shit is there in Wal-Mart that you'd want? Or even fucking need?

That's what it seems like it's all coming down to nowadays. Everybody is buying everything they can, while they can, at the place the work, while they're strung up on wake-up drugs, thinking about how to settle their second divorce, wondering if they can dress up like Paris goddamn Hilton on a budget, hopefully not get bombed by the thousands of terrorists here, and maybe, just maybe, go home and think about what kind of pre-packaged meal they'll be having for tonight.

I don't know when this started . . . maybe it's when we started valuing quantity over quality. Maybe it's when we said `yes, pretty people are more important then me'. Maybe it's when we decided that we'll go with whatever ideology suits us for that week. I don't know when it happened, and I doubt it even really fucking matters.

I just know that I'm going to be glad as fuck to get to the wilderness, as far away from people as I possibly can.